


Stuff of Stars

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Fairy Tale Like, Horcrux!Tom, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27553081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: The boy-with-the-moon has always looked to the boy-with-the-scar as if he is the sun.For Modoki. Happy birthday, dear friend!
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 28
Kudos: 203





	Stuff of Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wiegenlied](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiegenlied/gifts).



> When you have a new super cool friend that you bonded with over the summer and just find out their birthday is today so you churn out a quick fic to proclaim your ever lasting love for them because they deserve everything ahahahahah (lies down)
> 
> Ilu Modoki, you are the best!!!! Enjoy my sad attempt of a gift :)
> 
> This fic is inspired by modoki's art right [here](https://moonlight-modoki.tumblr.com/post/186878427495/harry-potter-and-tom-riddle-tarot-card)

**1 – night**

There was a boy born from his mother’s death, given his father’s name, left to fend for himself alone in an orphanage. He built himself a throne made of fear and this desire to consume more and more until he could someday fill the impossible _gaping hole_ in his chest. But alas, he was never satisfied.

He was born with the mark of a crescent moon on his chest, just above his heart, and he hated it. A part-moon. An empty gaping hole. A partially broken thing.

(But then, that boy, well… he broke his soul, didn’t he?)

(And his soul shards woke up in the prisonous _things_ they were tied too, screaming and screaming but no one heard th—)

**2 – sole**

“Don’t you know what soul marks are?” the boy-with-the-moon heard a Slytherin sneer at a muggle born once. “How can someone as dirty as you have one?”

The boy-with-the-moon listened carefully. The boy-with-the-moon clutched at his chest, suspicion brewing in his mind.

To the library he looked and he read and he read.

For wizards, for witches, for all of magical kind… there existed soulmates. Souls that you were potentially compatible with. Such ties didn’t have the same _muggle_ meaning of love, but of magical potential. Those with the same soul marks could share magic, could _harness_ with greater potential. They could be siblings, parent and child, sworn friends, or romantic partners. Soul mates were about the connection of magic… of power.

And as the boy-with-the-moon investigated various soul marks and their meanings (clubs were so common, diamonds a handful per nation, spades so numerous that they were a joke), his fingers freeze as they stop upon the meaning of a crescent moon soul mark.

‘Rare.’

‘Never seen before.’

‘Sole.’

‘Alone.’

The boy-with-the-moon chucks the book across the room, taking the only detention he will ever get, as something in him seethes and cries at once.

(Years later, when he learns of horcruxes, he takes that step towards destruction because he knows no soul will ever stand by him.)

**3 – dust**

If his soul fragments could speak with him, by the time he’s made his fifth horcrux, such questions they would ask. _Was it worth it? Is this agony worth the glory you proclaim? When will the rest of you feel our pain? When will you also fall, screaming in agony, tied to such cold stillness that you want to peel your skin off and die?_

The boy-with-the-moon, now a man, now a Dark Lord, cannot hear the sneering questions from the other parts of his soul. He can only hear the thrum of greed, of desperation.

He can only think that he will be immortal soon, as he raises his wand to kill a tiny baby with bright green eyes and then—

They say stars are made of stardust.

Do they scream too, when they collide and disappear into storms of stardust upon death?

Do they split their souls too, in this ode to dust?

**4 – day**

The boy-with-the-moon wakes slowly. He remembers being a man. He remembers being the Dark Lord. And yet, those memories seem so far away… distant islands that he drifts from. All he can feel is a gentle warmth…

Slowly, the boy-with-the-moon opens his eyes. He’s surprised to see how small he is. A boy again. About ten or eleven. He’s curled up against a windowpane, floating high up in the skies among the clouds. Above him, melded to the window pane, is a glinting silver moon.

Brow furrowed, the boy-with-the-moon looks around. He cannot recall how he got here but he feels like he has been sleeping for a long time, lulled into dreamless slumber by a steady heartbeat…

When he looks up, he sees him.

Another window pane. Another boy sitting on it’s edge, legs swinging back and forth. The boy-with-the-moon could be looking at his mirror image, at the same inky black hair and thin frame… but the boy above him has green eyes, large glasses… and this bright red scar that seems to glint like blood rubies against the light.

Heavens, he is so bright.

Stars and constellations hang about around the boy-with-the-scar, lighting up his face…

And the boy-with-the-moon… _aches_ for him.

(Inside him, something empty clicks in place.)

**5 – sun**

The boy-with-the-moon has never understood the phrase, ‘ _they looked like the sun_.’ But when he observes the boy-with-the-scar, when he sees reflections of that boy’s life within the stars above, glimpses of alchemist’s stones trapped in mirrors, of old basilisks seeking prey, of time turners and goblets of fire, the boy-with-the-moon can’t seem to look away from this boy… this boy with green eyes who looks so sad and tired, all the boy-with-the-moon wants is to let him rest…

Hold him close.

He wants to reach out into the sky, to climb each star and sit on the other boy’s window pane, to listen to his voice. As the other boy grows, so does the boy-with-the-moon. As the other boy weeps, so the boy-with-the-moon wants to destroy whoever made him cry. As the other boy laughs, so the boy-with-the-moon wants to be the one to own all that laughter.

When the other him, when _Voldemort_ comes back, the boy-with-the-moon makes a decision.

He reaches for the sun.

**6 – climb**

The boy-with-the-moon understands that he must be in the boy-with-the-scar’s mind. The boy-with-the-moon knows that he must be a horcrux. But still, he cannot let Voldemort touch the boy-with-the-scar. He cannot let Voldemort have the boy-like-the-sun.

He climbs.

It takes time to figure out how to visualize a lasso. The boy-with-the-moon is but a small soul fragment, his thoughts are not as powerful as they used to be. His first dozen attempts to create a rope fall apart. But the boy-with-the-moon tries again and again… and finally, he manages to lasso a star.

Each climb, each landing, brings him closer and closer to his boy-like-the-sun.

And yet, each step invites Voldemort to put his filthy mind into the boy-like-the-sun’s head, visions of prophecies and snakes haunting his boy-like-the-sun.

The boy-like-the-moon almost stops because he can’t be the reason that his boy-like-the-sun is swallowed up by his greedier self.

He might have stopped right there completely, marooned on a floating star, so close to the boy-like-the-sun…

…If Voldemort hadn’t torn into his boy-like-the-sun’s mind in a vicious form of possession.

**7 – Starlight**

The boy-like-the-sun is screaming, his mindscape in agony, all the stars shaking as Voldemort’s hands lash through the boy-like-the-sun’s mind.

“ _NO!_ ” the boy-like-the-moon roars as he sees the window panes falling… and with them, his boy-like-the-sun, about to be swallowed up by this gigantic visage of Voldemort, like a kraken opening its mouth to swallow its prey whole.

The boy-like-the-moon doesn’t think.

He jumps in after his boy-like-the-sun.

His arms encircle his boy-like-the-sun. For one beautiful and terrifying moment, he’s warm. He’s _whole_. He’s _not alone_.

‘Oh,’ he hears from a voice that’s not his own. ‘There you are.’

He feels the boy-like-the-sun’s arms twitch and return the desperate embrace.

They are enveloped in pure golden light.

**0 – stuff of souls**

The golden light incinerates Voldemort’s presence from the boy-like-the-sun’s mind. The only thing left in this mindscape of stars and floating window panes are two boys, slowly spinning downwards in space like dancers intwined.

The boy-like-the-sun’s green eyes are so wide and vivid.

“It’s you,” he breathes. “The one who’s been with me the whole time, guarding me.”

“Not much of the guard,” the boy-like-the-moon says. “Only an admirer. Though… not likely one you want.”

He knows very well that he looks exactly like the soul fragment of his sixteen-year-old self now. He knows very well that he must leave now that the boy-like-the-sun knows he’s here. He knows very well that he’d die, stop existing, if he does… but he wants his boy-like-the-sun to stay shining, stay safe, and Voldemort could still return because of _him_ —

The boy-like-the-sun studies him carefully, the way he focuses when he finds the snitch, when he casts his patronus.

“You’re him… aren’t you? Voldemort… but different.”

“…Tom,” the boy-like-the-moon says. “Just… call me Tom.”

He wants that name again, if it’s the last thing he hears before his boy-like-the-sun casts him away.

“…Tom,” his boy-like-the-sun repeats. He pauses for a moment, as if to savour the name. “I’m Harry.”

The boy-like-the-moon nearly scoffs. “I know.”

“…Right. You… you’ve been with me for a while… since _he_ tried to kill me, haven’t you? I always felt _someone_ there… I just thought it was my imagination. But it was _you_. I… I don’t understand why you helped me, when you _saved_ me from him. Don’t you want to go back?”

“ _NO!_ ” the boy-like-the-moon very nearly shouts, his grip so tight around his boy-like-the-sun. He can’t go back. Never. To that empty unfeeling husk that calls itself a wizard? To not knowing this warmth? To taking and taking until there’s nothing left? To destroying his sun? _No,_ he can’t—

His boy-like-the-sun’s eyes are so wide. Unable to comprehend. He’s spent so long staring up at him and _still_ , even when they’re this close, when they’re holding each other, his boy-like-the-sun doesn’t comprehend what a treasure he is, what a gem!

“I feel _whole_ when I’m with you,” the boy-like-the-moon proclaims. “My whole life, I’ve been alone. But with you… I don’t feel like that anymore. Do you… do you understand?”

The boy-like-the-sun’s lips tremble. He stares down at the golden light between them, this impossibility of _soulmates_ between one marked by the sun and one marked by the moon and the scar that tied them together.

“…Yeah,” he whispers. “I think I understand.”

A long breath escapes the boy-like-the-moon.

“…Do you… want me to leave?” he can’t help but ask. Will a dark part of him awaken and pull his boy-like-the-sun towards him always? Will a dark part of him try to make it so that his sun never leaves?

(Admittedly, deep deep down, the answer is likely yes. He is a selfish man, but he wants… oh, he _wants_ so very much.)

The boy-like-the-sun closes his eyes. “I’m so tired,” he admits. “You’re Tom… and you’re not Voldemort. You’ve been with me all my life… you _saved_ me. Am I allowed to want you to stay? Am I allowed to want you back?”

This vulnerability, this question, this honesty… the boy-like-the-moon can’t believe his ears.

“…Yes,” he whispers. “Please do.”

Harry Potter leans his forehead against the crook of this Tom’s neck.

“Then please… stay.”

(And Tom does, even after Harry chooses death in a forest.)

(Tom always stays.)

(And in that forest, Harry Potter wakes up hand in hand with the power the Dark Lord knows not… holding the hand of his moon, his Tom.)


End file.
